Cognitive associations of orthographic knowledge and spelling in children with Developmental Language Disorder

Children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) often have difficulties with spelling. Orthographic knowledge, which can be separated into general and specific orthographic knowledge, is a key source of information in long term memory children draw upon to make accurate spelling attempts. This paper reports findings from a study aimed to assess whether children’s orthographic knowledge is associated with spelling when vocabulary and working memory have been considered. Forty-three children with DLD and forty-three typically developing children matched for chronological age took part in the study, completing a battery of measures assessing working memory, vocabulary, orthographic knowledge, spelling (real word and pseudoword spelling). Regression analyses were conducted to measure the variation that individual differences in orthographic knowledge accounted for in spelling outcome measures. Results suggest that children with DLD relied more on working memory when making spelling attempts. Typically, developing children were able to utilise orthographic awareness or draw more from their mental lexicon. The results align with an account where children with DLD either have less well specified orthographic knowledge or are less able to access this knowledge when making spelling attempts.